Garden of Beasts

Russian.”
    “Nobody there does either. Besides, you’ll probably never need the passport. It’s just to get you out of the country in an emergency.”
    “And,” Paul added quickly, “to make sure nobody traces me to you if I don’t make it out, right?”
    The Senator’s hesitation, followed by a glance at Gordon, said he was on the money.
    Paul continued. “Who’m I supposed to be working for? All the papers’ll have stringers there. They’d know I wasn’t a reporter.”
    “We thought of that. You’ll be writing freelance storiesand trying to sell ’em to some of the sports rags when you get back.”
    Paul asked, “Who’s your man over there?”
    Gordon said, “No names just now.”
    “I don’t need a name. Do you trust him? And why?”
    The Senator said, “He’s been living there for a couple of years and getting us quality information. He served under me in the War. I know him personally.”
    “What’s his cover there?”
    “Businessman, facilitator, that sort of thing. Works for himself.”
    Gordon continued. “He’ll get you a weapon and whatever you need to know about your target.”
    “I don’t have a real passport. In my name, I mean.”
    “We know, Paul. We’ll get you one.”
    “Can I have my guns back?”
    “No,” Gordon said and that was the end of the matter. “So that’s our general plan, my friend. And, I should tell you, if you’re thinking of hopping a freight and laying low in some Hooverville out west? . . .”
    Paul sure as hell had been. But he frowned and shook his head.
    “Well, these fine young men’ll be sticking to you like limpets until the ship docks in Hamburg. And if you should get the same hankering to slip out of Berlin, our contact’s going to be keeping an eye on you. If you disappear, he calls us and we call the Nazis to tell them an escaped American killer’s at large in Berlin. And we’ll give them your name and picture.” Gordon held his eye. “If you think we were good at tracking you down, Paul, you ain’t seen nothing like the Nazis. And from what we hear they don’t bother with trials and writs of execution. Now, we clear on that?”
    “As a bell.”
    “Good.” The commander glanced at Avery. “Now, tell him what happens after he finishes the job.”
    The lieutenant said, “We’ll have a plane and a crew waiting in Holland. There’s an old aerodrome outside of Berlin. After you’ve finished we’ll fly you out from there.”
    “Fly me out?” Paul asked, intrigued. Flying fascinated him. When he was nine he broke his arm—the first of more times than he wanted to count—when he built a glider and launched himself off the roof of his father’s printing plant, crash-landing on the filthy cobblestones two stories below.
    “That’s right, Paul,” Gordon said.
    Avery offered, “You like airplanes, don’t you? You’ve got all those airplane magazines in your apartment. Books too. And pictures of planes. Some models too. You make those yourself?”
    Paul felt embarrassed. It made him angry that they’d found his toys.
    “You a pilot?” the Senator asked.
    “Never even been in a plane before.” Then he shook his head. “I don’t know.” This whole thing was absolutely nuts. Silence filled the room.
    It was broken by the man in the wrinkled white suit. “I was a colonel in the War too. Just like Reinhard Ernst. And I was at Argonne Woods. Just like you. ”
    Paul nodded.
    “You know the total?”
    “Of what?”
    “How many we lost?”
    Paul remembered a sea of bodies, American, French and German. The wounded were in some ways more horrible. They cried and wailed and moaned and calledfor their mothers and fathers and you never forgot that sound. Ever.
    The older man said in a reverent voice, “The AEF lost more than twenty-five thousand. Almost a hundred wounded. Half the boys under my command died. In a month we advanced seven miles against the enemy. Every day of my life I’ve thought about those numbers. Half my soldiers, seven miles. And Meuse-Argonne was our most spectacular victory in the War. . . . I do not want that to happen again.”
    Paul regarded him. “Who are you?” he asked again.
    The Senator stirred and began to speak but the other man replied, “I’m Cyrus Clayborn.”
    Yeah, that was it. Brother . . . The old guy was the head of Continental Telephone and Telegraph—a real honest-to-God millionaire, even now, in the shadow of the Depression.
    The man continued. “Daddy